Month: October 2025

Mounjaro Journey, 21 weeks, 7.5mg

flidfit Disability, Media, Mounjaro, Uncategorized

The car is fixed!  And what’s more…. and what’s more, it didn’t cost me a single penny….

We drove the 30 minutes to Maidenhead on Tuesday to visit the adaptation specialist’s home. He’s semi-retired but still maintains some of his clients, which has worked in my favour. The drive was enjoyable, with lovely autumn colours. Upon arrival, he simply fetched a couple of screwdrivers, removed the steering column housing, adjusted some connections and wiring, and then reassembled everything. It took him about 10 minutes!

I’d made and taken a packed lunch since the appointment was at 12.30 pm. We had planned to walk the short distance to Boulter’s Lock if it took a while to resolve the problem. However, it was raining, so instead we drove home (I was driving!) and ate our lunch there. This was the first time I’d driven the car in about a month because, although it was safe to drive, the steering was just too stiff for me to handle safely.

Sam and I have been working hard to begin clearing one end of our kitchen and dining room. In just over a week, we will start some building work—replacing two large windows and a French door with a large glass sliding door. The new “glass wall” will be nearly 4 metres wide and will provide easier (step-free) access to the garden, as well as offering a better view. Of course, to achieve my “vision”, we will need to endure some disruption and mess, which should last about a month.

Food prep this week has been a large batch of what I call “pizza sauce”, although it’s never used for making pizza!  Tinned and fresh tomatoes, onions, garlic, herbs and tomato puree.  The sauce is now portioned up in the freezer (16 portions) to be used in recipes in the future.  The freezer is full.   No more batch cooking until next year.

Mounjaro: I have taken a 7.5mg injection from a 10mg pen, which seems to have suppressed my appetite sufficiently over the week.

I’ve uploaded a short video with extra weight-loss tips I have found helpful during my weight-loss journey, especially while using Mounjaro. Feel free to watch it and consider subscribing to my YouTube channel.

Weight:  59.7kg – 700g off (about 3/4 lb)

Weight to lose:  2.7kg  (about 6lbs)

Total weight loss on Mounjaro:  11.7kg (about 25lbs, or 1 stone 11lbs)

Total weight loss since the start of my journey (February 2012): 29.2kg (4 stone 8lbs)

 

Mounjaro Journey – 20 weeks, 7.5mg

flidfit Disability, Emotional well being, Mounjaro, Recipes

Hello folks! well, that’s another week under my belt.

I’ve arranged with the adaptation specialist for him to take a look at the steering issue with my car tomorrow lunchtime.  In the meantime, I’ve stayed close to home.  Well, stayed at home!

I’ve enjoyed exploring YouTube channels to hear about others’ experiences of using Mounjaro.  It’s lovely to learn how others have dealt with the price increase, coming off Mounjaro and, more importantly, giving their lived experience.  I purposefully chose those who are a similar age to me, all with very different reasons for choosing the path of weight loss medication.

My sister brought my Mum to visit after her hospital check-up nearby. I served homemade tomato and lentil soup with bread and cheese, then orange jelly, mandarins, ginger cake, and crème fraiche.  Got to love jelly!  No sugar-free for me, this was the real deal (and orange, if you’re interested in the detail!)

Kedgeree with smoked haddock. A generous portion for 553 calories

We ate our lunch before they arrived, since Mum couldn’t eat until after her 2:30 pm appointment. They ended up having lunch at 3 pm.  There’s no way I could have lasted until then!

This weekend I made a tasty kedgeree with smoked haddock.  This is not something I make often, as I think it’s fiddly – but it’s actually pretty easy and a one-pot meal—something to be repeated.

Tonight I’m giving a presentation via Zoom to others about my weight loss journey – of course, Mounjaro features, but I want to share how crucial it is to make changes to our lifestyle and the way we approach food.

So just a short post from me this week!  How’s your week been (with or without weight loss medication….?)

My plan for injections and dosage this week is a 7.5mg dose injection at lunchtime.

Weight loss:  200g

Last week:  60.6kg, this week 60.4kg

Total loss:  11kg (around 24lbs, or 1 stone 10lbs)

That’s an average loss of 1.2lbs a week, which I’m very happy with.

 

Mounjaro Journey – 19 weeks, 7.5mg

flidfit Disability, Emotional well being, Exercise, Media, Mounjaro

A productive and productive week.  I’ve sorted and made space in my freezer and then promptly got to work filling it again!  Both soups made 10 portions, so the freezer is now nearly at capacity.  As the weather gets cooler, I’ve been making batches of homemade soup.

The first one was a chicken and vegetable soup, with added lentils.  The second was a spicy tomato and lentil soup made with the huge glut of tomatoes harvested throughout the summer months.

Both were easy to make, but the tomato-based soup required sweating the tomatoes down to create a really sweet and concentrated passata.

This week, with the assistance of my excellent personal assistant Sam, I completed another job: sorting out all the freezer drawers and updating my inventory.  The freezer is stored in the garage and is about 2 metres tall with seven drawers.  We roughly keep things organised together – meat, bread products, fish, etc.  I know it’s time to update my list when things have been jumbled up into different freezer drawers, so when I ask someone to retrieve something, it’s nowhere to be found!  Anyway, despite being full, the freezer is now totally organised, and we can concentrate on eating some of the items that I know have been in there for a while.

This week, the issue with the car’s steering was identified, but unfortunately, it was not fixed.  I’m waiting for a call from my modification/adaptation guy, and hopefully, he’ll come to take a look since it involves some of the work he did on the car when it was new.  Due to my shortened arms, some wiring and switches needed to be moved from the side of the seat into a box on the steering column, allowing me to adjust my seat position safely. It’s that wiring that appears to be impacting the power steering.  Hopefully, something that can be easily resolved and not too expensive.  I’ve not been charged by either of the two garages that have been involved so far.

On Saturday morning, we participated in a litter pick of our local area with neighbours.  This is something I organise regularly.  Not only do we make the area look cleaner, but we also use the opportunity to socialise afterwards in a local café.  I thought I’d try bubble tea for the first time and chose a “brown sugar bubble tea”.  It was very nice (a bit like a watery milkshake with large gelatinous pearls that add interest, texture, but no flavour.  When I returned home, I checked the calorie content of a bubble tea and was horrified to learn it could have been between 300 and 600 calories!  It was nice, but not THAT nice.

On Sunday, we were invited to a friend’s for afternoon drinks and socialising.  Mounjaro has meant that I’m not particularly enjoying alcohol now.  I’m not a big drinker anyway – those days are far behind me!  I bought and tried a bottle of Tanqueray Alcohol Free Spirit.  It most definitely doesn’t taste of gin but has a pleasant botanical juniper and citrus combination.

Oh!  I phoned in to LBC London radio on Sunday morning.  The discussion was about 1 in 20 people in this country now being on weight loss medication…  You can hear me on the radio (this morning) at 02:26:03 into the programme. Talking about my weight loss journey 😁

And I’ve also uploaded a little video onto YouTube.  What’s been your experience of using weight loss drugs and other people’s attitudes towards that?  Do you share openly or do you only share with those you trust to support you and not to be critical of your choice?  I’ve got a very tough skin, but I hate bullying in any form and don’t tolerate it. I’ll call it out when I can, but the power of social media and those keyboard warriors do sometimes serve to defeat me!  Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel to receive notifications of new posts.

Measurements!  As promised, I’ve done my body measurements and am pleased to share the results here.I’m pleased that the centimetres are going from those places that I want them to.  I’m always astonished by the change, but I am feeling it in my clothes.    I’ve been buying a few new tops (t-shirts) on Vinted.  I’m steering away from my usual patterned blouses – new shape, new style!

Weight:  60.5kg – 500g off (about 1lb)

Weight to lose:  3.5kg  (about half a stone/7lbs)

 

 

 

 

Mounjaro Journey = 18 weeks, 2 x 5mg

flidfit Disability, Emotional well being, Mounjaro

Another week has passed.  I have noticed this week that my hunger levels have increased.  My meals are starting to look kind of “back to normal”.  They were never huge, but I am clearing everything on my plate and enjoying it a bit too much.  I plan to take a 7.5mg dose of Mounjaro this week to see if increasing the dosage slightly has any effect on my appetite suppression.

I am in no hurry to reach the “finishing line”.  I recognise that there will never be an end to remaining mindful about what I consume and keeping track of my calorie intake if I want to maintain my weight loss.  That is the reality of being a very short, not very mobile older woman.

It’s not a vanity thing; I want to be lighter.  I accepted in my twenties that my body shape precludes me from being an “ideal shape”.  However, I do want to preserve my good health at a time in my life when the likelihood of avoidable conditions is increasing.

It’s (thankfully) been a quieter week in terms of socialising and eating out.  We arranged to attend a charity fundraising quiz at a local Cuban restaurant/bar.  We were raising funds for PACT (Parents and Children Together).

“PACT changes lives by building and nurturing adoptive families and empowering women, children and parents to rebuild after trauma and embrace a positive future.

Established in 1911, PACT is now one of the UK’s leading charities in its field and is dedicated to finding secure and loving families for children waiting to be adopted, continued support through therapeutic services, supporting and empowering women facing multiple disadvantages and the recovery of children affected by domestic abuse.”

The theme of the evening was our town, Reading.  The Quiz Master was Terry from Terry’s Reading Walkabouts, and he and his wife had set the questions.  I hoped that we might have an advantage, my partner and I being lifelong residents of the town.  Our team came in a respectful joint 4th place (out of approximately 15 teams), so we were pleased with that.

The food we ordered sadly didn’t match the ambience of the evening or the excellent company.  We were served dry (chicken), which lacked identifiable flavours.  My radish salad helped to add some crunch and colour.  The spicy rice may well have been a microwaved rice pouch!  Ah well…. The purpose of the night wasn’t eating a lovely meal, which was just as well!  I enjoy these reminders of why eating out isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

My car took a trip to the garage this week, as it has developed an issue with the power steering.  Sadly, my usual garage was unable to identify or resolve the problem and advised that it be booked in to the main dealership.  It’s booked to be with them over two days this week, so we’ll be grounded.  Well, at least in terms of driving anywhere…

If you’d like to watch my latest YouTube video update, you can view it here!  Here are a couple of comparison pictures, taken six weeks apart—definitely less of a tyre around my middle.  I’m going to be doing my measurements this week, so I will share them with you next week!

My weight this week:

400g (approximately 1lb), current weight 61kg, down 10.4kg from my starting weight on 2nd June 2025.  Just 4kg away from my target weight.

BMI down from 35.3 to 30.2.

Mounjaro Journey 17 weeks, 2 x 5mg

flidfit Eating Out, Eating Out, Mounjaro, Vegan / Plant based, Vegeterian

Another good week… I’m a little late posting an update as I have been celebrating my birthday (63!) and my sister and brother-in-law are staying for five days.  They live about a 3-hour drive away, so we are treating their stay as a mini-staycation and have been enjoying days out.  We were joined by my daughter and her boyfriend for two days – they travelled all the way from Leeds (about 4 hours away) to join in the birthday celebrations.

These included a boat trip along the River Thames, a lovely walk in the sunshine along the river to Caversham for lunch at Vegivores, a vegan restaurant, and a morning trip to a local museum – The Museum of English Rural Life.

Food choices have been good – I prepared all of our evening meals in advance and put them into the freezer.  A fish pie, a carrot, lentil and beef bolognese and a Moroccan spiced minced lamb with stuffed roasted peppers.

We took packed lunches (salad for me) and our vegan restaurant lunch was carefully selected – a vegan macaroni cheese and delicious tahini crunch salad – shredded rainbow veggies, tahini dressing, sesame, mint and lime.

 

Of course, there was (birthday) cake, homemade butternut squash spiced cake.  I enjoyed one slice, and the rest was eagerly consumed by everyone else over the staycation.

I took 2 x 5mg injections from my 10mg pen 5 days apart.  I could feel hunger pangs returning on day 4!

I realise the feeling-hungry sensation was a daily occurrence before Mounjaro… and I most certainly don’t miss it.

As the maximum effect of the injection occurs around 48 hours after administration, it’s helpful to time it before the food noise becomes too overwhelming and hunger pangs become too unbearable.

Weight loss this week – 600g (approximately 1.3 lb), so my current weight is 61.4kg, down 10kg from my starting weight on June 2nd.

Just 4.4kg away from my target weight.